Fearless Forecast - Zombies, Zombies, Everywhere

The biggest zombie movie ever in terms of total box office was the remake of Dawn of the Dead, directed by Zack Snyder and featuring one of the best extending openings in horror movie history. But the sub-genre has a proud history, which according to Box Office Mojo, has earned about $600 million over the years. Considering the low budgets and niche audience, that's anything but undead. So the question this week is whether or not Zombieland can become the latest in a fairly short line of zombie movies to win the box office. To do it, the film will need to defeat Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which is still enjoying a healthy run. The numbers aren't as big as we normally see for a Pixar or a DreamWorks cartoon, but Sony spent about half of what its competitors normally do, so it doesn't need to make as much in return. The odds are about even for Zombieland and Meatballs to win. In Zombieland's favor are, in all seriousness, some of the best reviews of the year. That helped The Hangover crash the party in June and I have a feeling it could do the same thing here. I wouldn't say it's primed for a $40 million weekend, but if it hits $23 million or so, I wouldn't be terribly surprised, although it would shock me if it did less than $15 million based on the word of mouth. But if it doesn't get a bounce from the positive word of mouth, Zombieland would trail Meatballs by a couple million bucks or so. There's also competition in the animated arena with the re-release of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3-D. That'll do some business and will of course take some away from Meatballs, but a double feature, no matter how good the films are, probably doesn't have a realistic shot at winning the weekend. The other new releases - Whip It, Capitalism, and The Invention of Lying - should all wind up between $6 and $11 million, and I'll give the edge to Drew Barrymore's Whip It just because it's in the most theaters. It's not likely any of the three will have huge box office numbers in the final analysis. However, none of them really need to do that in order to be considered successful. The Top Five:
1 - Zombieland ($19.5 million)
2 - Chance of Meatballs ($18 million)
3 - Toy Story and Toy Story 2 ($11 million)
4 - Whip It ($8 million)
5 - Surrogates ($7 million)

Comments

[NIronwolf]

Meatballs will also take a hit from givibg up most of it's 3D screens to Toy Stories in a few hours.

[Get The Big Picture]

Good point.

[SEAN]

gotta mention Paranormal Activity is more selected theatres!!!

Go see it